


Angel, Please

by alexanger



Series: We're Okay [5]
Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Healing, Hurt/Comfort, Multi, Past Abuse, Scene Gone Wrong
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-26
Updated: 2016-06-26
Packaged: 2018-07-18 11:23:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7313236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alexanger/pseuds/alexanger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alexander’s body is limp and pliant, and it takes John a moment to realize that this fluidity, the looseness of his muscles, is not absorption, but surrender.</p><p>Trauma comes in waves, and Alex can usually ride them, but sometimes they hit hard and he finds himself drowning. Sometimes John isn't the safe haven he usually is. Eliza steps up to keep her boys safe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Angel, Please

It hits him hard, crushing weight, hurricane, and he’s swept off his feet and gone.

Alexander’s body is limp and pliant, and it takes John a moment to realize that this fluidity, the looseness of his muscles, is not absorption, but surrender. John always listens carefully, and he’s certain Alex didn’t call red. Nonetheless, he pulls out and gently encourages, “Alexander, please roll over.”

Alex rolls onto his back, and his eyes are glassy, his lips slack. There’s a terrifying lack of emotion on his face. Those dark eyes are entirely devoid of hunger, and that’s when John feels the first twinge of fear.

“Alex, honey, give me a colour,” John presses.

“Green,” Alexander responds automatically, robotically, lying without a hint of hesitation. He’s wet still, but seems embarrassed. His hand covers his genitals and he whimpers as his palm brushes against his clit.

“Not green, baby. I can tell. What’s it really?” John asks.

“Green,” Alexander stubbornly insists. He pulls John towards him, fighting to kiss him while John struggles to keep some distance between him. For a moment, Alexander’s eyes are still empty. Then, without warning, they fill with tears that spill over, a torrent of frustration and distress spilling down his cheeks like waterfalls. “Green,” Alex pleads, and John is unsure exactly who he’s trying to convince. “Green, please, green, green -”

“Shhh,” John soothes. He pulls Alexander against him, but the fluidity is gone, replaced by awkward limbs and locking joints that jerk and falter. John holds a man who resembles a shattered marionette more than a living creature.

“I can do it,” Alex insists, but there’s no force behind the words. There’s a deep weariness in his voice and that exhaustion echoes in John’s ribs and pounds at his heart.

“I’m stopping you, Alex. This isn’t safe for you so it’s not safe for me.” John presses Alexander firmly back into the mattress and buries his fingers in the dark hair cascading loose around Alexander’s face. “Just breathe for me, okay? You here with me, honey?”

“Yes.” The answer is emotionless.

“Tell me your name.”

Alex falters for a moment, and that’s when the tears start again. “I don’t want this,” he insists, and John doesn’t ask, “want what?”

Instead he murmurs, “I know, I know,” and presses his lips to Alexander’s forehead.

“I want to be good,” Alex continues stubbornly.

“I know, I know.”

“And you won’t _let_ me be good.”

“You can be good like this, angel. My good boy. Relax. Feel my fingers?” John waits for a hum of assent. “Feel how nice that is. Feel good?” Another hum, lower this time. “All I want you to do is focus on that. Let it happen. You’re safe here.”

“Not good enough,” Alex spits, and suddenly he’s snarling, furious, combative, thrusting John’s hands away and kicking at him. “Go away, leave me alone.”

John backs up, his hands up, palms out, disarmed. “I don’t want to leave you, angel.”

“Get the _fuck_ away from me,” Alex snarls. “You’re not helping. Go away.”

There’s emotion in his eyes again, but it’s anger, raw and exposed. The long marionette limbs are bunched and ready to strike out, so John drops it, backs away, pulls on pants and disengages.

“Can I sit here on the edge of the bed with you?” he asks, eyeing Alexander warily.

“No,” Alex says stubbornly.

“I’m worried about you -”

“I don’t fucking _care_!” Alex whips his hand out and shoves John away. “Leave me alone! Fuck! How many times do I have to say it?”

“Okay,” John snaps, his temper rising. “I’m just trying to help you. Fuck."

Before Alex can fit another word in, he turns and leaves the room. He pauses in the doorway and looks back at the man in the centre of the bed, who sits hunched over, a wounded animal minimizing itself against an inevitable blow.

“I love you,” John says, the irritation gone from his voice. “Even if you’re upset, angel. I’ll be just outside.”

As much as it pains him to go, John knows Alex well enough by now to listen when Alex says to leave. He closes the door firmly behind him.

He’s probably just imagining the sound of a whimper as the latch clicks.

 

*

 

Eliza comes home mid afternoon, her hair as perfectly braided as when it was put up that morning. Her posture is open and her step bounces, a clear sign of a good day, but the second she catches sight of John sprawled on the couch, she reads his tension and her posture closes slightly.

“Sir?” she asks hesitantly.

“Nope, no, not ‘sir’ right now. Can you check on Alex?” John looks up from beneath the cascade of curls hiding his eyes. “I think I hit something with him earlier today and he’s not letting me near him. He’s been alone for maybe an hour. No noise, I don’t think he broke anything this time, but I think it was probably pretty bad. You’re better at handling him like this than I am.”

She doesn’t thank him for that last bit, and he doesn’t intend it as a compliment. It’s just a fact - Eliza knows how to handle Alexander’s raw nerves better than John could ever hope to.

“Did he say anything about it?” she asks, and the way her voice changes as she shifts from her usual position of submission into power is strengthening. John breathes in the change like he has been drowning and has finally caught a lungful of clear air.

“No, but he was calling green when he wasn’t in a good place. Which … probably tells you exactly what it is.”

They share a long look. John, surprisingly, is the first to look away. He doesn’t do well talking about managing Alexander’s trauma.

“Then I’d better get in there and take care of this. Water?” she asks, and John hurries to grab her a tall glass and fill it from the pitcher in the fridge. Alex likes it painfully cold when he’s having a hard time; it burns a little, going down, and it keeps him away from the more dangerous ways he externalizes pain.

“Angel. You,” John tells Eliza, and she knows what he means - I believe in you, I trust you, I love you, thank you, I can’t do this without you.

“You,” she answers, and she kisses his forehead before letting herself into the bedroom the three of them share.

 

*

 

The bedroom is dark, the blinds pulled, and there’s an amorphous blob in the middle of the bed that’s roughly Alex-sized. He seems to be hiding under the covers. There’s the sound of breathing, slow and regular, which is either a really good sign or a really bad one.

On a better day, Eliza would go “wheeeeere’s Alex?” and pounce the bed. Now, she sets the water on one nightstand, far enough from the bed that Alex probably won’t hit it if he decides to kick, and sits on the edge of the bed.

“Fuck off, John,” comes a muffled voice from inside the nest of blankets.

“Off he has fucked,” Eliza agrees, trying to keep her voice light. “All the way off to the couch. That’s, like, as far off as you can fuck in this apartment.”

There’s a few long moments of silence, and then Alexander’s arm snakes out from under the blanket. His skin is damp and she can smell sweat and tears, but she doesn’t comment. His fingers find hers and clamp down hard. “Hey,” Alex says softly.

“Hey. Something happen?” she asks.

Another long moment before Alex replies. “Yellow.”

So she tries something else. “Wanna know what I did today?”

“Yeah.”

“You know that kid I’ve been talking about? The one who’s been in like, seven different homes in the past year?”

“Yeah?”

“Well, we just placed her in another home last week. She’s been in fosters this whole time and now she’s in a group home, and she came in today to check in. Looking awesome, haircut, new clothes, nails done, smiling like she won the lottery. The girls she’s living with took her out to a movie her first night there and they’ve been keeping her busy since. She feels like she actually has people to connect with now.”

“Yeah?” There’s warmth edging into Alexander’s voice.

“Yeah. She’s really happy."

Alexander squeezes her hand. Talking about good placements, about happy kids, always makes him hungry - the foster system was unkind to him and he got out of it too early, started working at fourteen and was renting a bedroom by sixteen, technically illegally, but no one ever cared to look close enough. These success stories are something he never had, but he loves to know that these children will have something he never got.

“Did John bring something up about your last placement?”

Just like that, Alexander startles, like he’s been struck. That’s something there, always - the reason he got out of the system.

“No,” he grunts, but it’s sullen, it’s not the whole truth.

“Something came up, though.”

“About him.”

“October?”

“October.”

They don’t name the boy. They don’t have to. They name the month, instead, and all three of them know exactly what it means when they bring it up. “It’s an October kind of day,” Eliza might say to John casually, and that means that they have to be careful where they touch him, and how, and when. Or maybe Alex will be staring off into space and jerk, suddenly, and in response to two concerned faces, he’ll sheepishly explain, “I was thinking about October.”

Now, in this moment, it means that something hit him in the way that October did, and Eliza needs to push and prod until she finds exactly what did it, so they avoid it in the future.

But it’s a dance. Alex won’t talk openly about October, at least not unless he’s very drunk or very medicated or both. After his top surgery, when he was on percocet, he would babble after each dose, telling them more than they’d ever known about October and what happened in foster care. Both John and Eliza agreed not to bring that information up, but they stored it away, taking careful note of how to keep Alexander safe.

“Is it because John’s a man?”

“Yes,” Alex agrees, but too fast. That isn’t the whole thing either. John is often where Alex seeks sanctuary when he’s haunted. He begs to be fucked mercilessly, and the brutal sessions that follow always result in a sleepy, content Alexander, the trauma spots patched over, if only temporarily.

“Did he touch somewhere without asking?”

“No."

“Did you touch him somewhere that scared you?”

“No.”

“Did he say a bad word?”

There’s silence, which means _yes, fuck, yes, he did and it was awful and I was so scared but I can’t say yes because that makes me ungrateful and he takes such good care of me that I can’t be upset, even though I_ am _upset._

Eliza pulls the blanket back and Alexander wriggles into her lap, laying his face against her leg and nuzzling her belly. She’s lean but there’s a hint of softness there and Alex loves to press his face against her and kiss her stomach. She untucks her blouse from her skirt and allows his lips to make contact with her skin. She is rewarded by the ghost of a smile.

“Can you tell me the words he used?” There is hesitance, so Eliza gently pulls her blouse over his head. “Look, you’re in the safety tent.”

Alex allows himself a chuckle.

“What happens in the safety tent, Alex?” she asks him.

“Tummy kisses,” he mumbles against her skin.

“Mmhm. What else?”

“Safe space,” he adds.

“Can you tell me the words, my love?” Eliza gently presses.

Alex clenches his hands in her skirt. It sounds like he’s grinding his teeth for a moment before he manages to spit out, “cum rag.”

“Did that happen in October?”

He doesn’t respond with his voice, but he signs _yes, bad hard worst_ and Eliza kisses one flitting hand.

“I’ll tell John not to use that again.”

 _No, fine, word’s ok, sorry I’m bad_ signs Alex frantically. He can’t connect _bad_ to his face but he patters his fingertips against her shirt and it’s close enough that she understands.

“Shhhh, Alex. I know, love, I know,” Eliza murmurs. She runs her nails up and down along his upper arms. “Did John ever use that word before?”

_No._

“So it’s not his favourite. He can stop using it. You know which ones are his favourites?”

 _Baby girl. Angel. Kitten. Honey._ There’s a hesitation, and then Alex raises one hand in the sign for _I love you._

“That one’s his most favourite. Okay?”

_Ok ok ok._

“You come drink your water, pretty boy."

Alex emerges from the safety tent and sits up obligingly. Eliza hands him the glass of water. He won’t meet her eyes, but he links the fingers of his free hand through hers, and holds on tight.

“You okay, Alex?” Eliza asks. He nods. “Ready to say hi to John, or not yet?”

Alexander pauses, clicking his teeth against the glass. “Ready,” he says, and Eliza believes him. His shoulders are still tense, but she knows when he’s lying - she can read him like no one else, this boy who cannot deceive her, and she knows he’s pushing himself hard but not too hard. This isn’t dangerous; the hurricane has passed, and he’s done drowning for today.

She texts John, not ready to leave Alexander’s side, and John must have been watching his phone because he seems to be there instantly, surrounding both of them with hugs. Alexander’s eyes are half closed so Eliza signs to John instead - _cum rag bad word, not safe_ \- and John responds _ok ok ok_ and focuses all his energy on covering Alexander’s face in kisses.

“This, here, this is what green looks like,” he says, breathless, his lips tingling where Alexander captured them and bit and licked and sucked. Eliza blows in John’s ear, a gentle reprimand for reprimanding Alex so soon after breakdown, but Alex is delighted, nestling safe against John’s chest.

“Yes sir,” he says cheekily. “Want me to show you what else green looks like?”

John turns to Eliza, who winks, showing her approval. He needs no further encouragement to pull Alex into his lap and kiss him.

“Where did we leave off?” he breathes into Alexander’s ear, and Alex practically purrs.

**Author's Note:**

> apologies to anyone fluent in asl. i realize my translations are more similar to signed english than actual asl and here's why. my datemate pointed out to me that verbatim translations might differ so much in syntax from that it would reflect poorly on asl for those who don't know the language. for example, instead of "sorry i'm bad" would be more like "sorry me bad me."
> 
> title is from [this song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQlYO75fSlU) and i know it's the most upbeat, peppy song for this kind of fic, but you should check out the [lyrics](http://genius.com/Ra-ra-riot-angel-please-lyrics).


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